The News-Gazette.com: UI chancellor says ex-trustee chairman pressured him

UI chancellor says ex-trustee chairman pressured him

By Paul Wood

Tuesday, July 7, 2009 4:15 PM CDT

CHICAGO – University of Illinois Chancellor Richard Herman said Monday he was trying to insulate academics from outside pressures when he handled special admissions requests from trustees and legislators.

Herman also said he felt pressured by former Board of Trustees Chairman Lawrence Eppley to admit a law school candidate "at the low end of the spectrum." Herman approved his admission to the law school.

Eppley did not return a call from The News-Gazette on Monday.

Much of Herman's testimony before Gov. Pat Quinn's admission hearing tried to get at a "tit for tat" between the chancellor and the trustee.

The three-hour grilling left Herman looking tired. He said after the hearing that he was heartened by a letter of support from almost 50 UI top scholars.

In a series of 2005 e-mails among Herman, Eppley and then-Law Dean Heidi Hurd, the trustee applied pressure on behalf of the law student.

The talk then turned to getting jobs for five UI law graduates.

The admission to law school was made "simply on the basis of the directive" from Eppley, he said. "I chose to ask (Eppley) to help the law school."

Herman said "My message was, 'What does the law school get for this?'" He said he doesn't recall whether he or Eppley brought up the notion of five jobs, noted prominently in a series of e-mails involving the law school admissions.

Hurd's e-mail, in which she discussed the jobs for the lowest-ranking students, was "facetious," Herman said, though he added the language in the exchanges was "regrettable."

Commission Chairman Abner Mikva noted that Eppley could provide jobs in his law firm and said that idea was "too important to joke about."

"This doesn't sound like joking," Mikva said to Herman.

Herman said he doesn't believe any jobs were ever granted.

"I honestly thought Dean Hurd was joking," he said. "This was my way of tweaking Larry Eppley to do something for the law school. But I didn't seriously believe there were jobs."

Monday's meeting is the third held by the commission, appointed by Quinn after revelations about pressure over admissions at the UI.

Herman also said the university should get rid of the special admissions category that has prompted a state investigation.

He said the system has existed in some form for decades. He received about 40 requests a year, he said, most from UI trustees. He said he had "no idea" how much UI President B. Joseph White knew about the cases.

Herman said then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich applied pressure over admissions. He also said Eppley told him "we need to get this done" after a complaint over admissions.

Asked about dealing with Blagojevich, Herman said, "absolutely not." He confirmed that an e-mail reference of "straight from the G" referred to Blagojevich.

Law school admissions official Paul Pless testified late in the afternoon about the admissions process. The meeting originally had been scheduled to adjourn at 4 p.m., but Pless did not begin testifying until about 4:30 p.m.

Pless, assistant dean of law school admissions, told the panel that over four years, the university forced the College of Law to admit 24 politically connected students who wouldn't have been accepted otherwise. During that time, about 900 students were admitted overall.

Pless said the number of forced admissions gradually tapered off after peaking in 2006, and that there haven't been any this year.

Pless, who has worked for the university since 2003, said he always opposed clout admissions but didn't feel he should make a formal complaint.

"I thought of this as distasteful and wrong. I never thought of it as illegal," he said.

Pless said after the hearing that he also didn't know where to turn.

"At the time that this was going on, who could I go to?" he said. "Gov. Blagojevich?"

The situation has caught the eye of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who already is prosecuting the ousted Democrat for political corruption and has subpoenaed the University of Illinois, Southern Illinois University and Northern Illinois University for any correspondence about students from Blagojevich and four former associates.

As the only school that complied with Fitzgerald's request by Thursday's deadline, Southern Illinois revealed Friday that it only found Blagojevich submitted recommendation letters in 2005 on behalf of two applicants to the Carbondale campus law school. Neither applicant was admitted, the university said, without identifying the prospective students.

UI spokesman Tom Hardy has said his school still was looking through documents. Northern Illinois says it has been given until Aug. 15 to comply.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.